Page 57

The crush of bodies is suffocating. I’m adrift in a sea of silk skirts and tailored suits, of tinkling laughter and insincere smiles sharp enough to cut. I strain against the vice of my corset with each shallow breath.

“Relax,” Catherine murmurs. “Do try to look a bit less like you’re being drawn and quartered right here in the ballroom.”

“Being drawn and quartered sounds like an excellent alternative,” I say. “I’ll get the horses—”

Her hand clamps down. “Not yet. We’re here to be seen, as you well know. You need to make an appearance after being shut up in your townhouse for a month.” She nudges my shoulder. “I’m here to provide moral support. Now, chin up and pretend you don’t find these affairs utterly loathsome.”

But as we’re swept into the ballroom on a swell of music and chatter, everywhere I look—

Memories.

They surge up, merciless. Kiaran’s face flickers in every shadow.

I see him as he was at the ceilidh in Skye, a dark figure cutting through the revellers. His eyes molten as they locked on mine through the press of bodies. The heat of his hands dragging me into an alcove. Hitching my skirts up, up—

I squeeze my eyes shut against the onslaught, a wounded noise building behind my teeth.

Too much. It’s too much. This room, these people. I can’t breathe past the splintered shards of my grief, the howling loss itching beneath my skin.

I’m going to claw my way out of my own body if I don’t escape.

“I need air,” I gasp to Catherine.

Catherine quickly assesses me, notes how my carefully composed mask is cracking. “Go. I’ll make your excuses.”

I hurry through the crush. I have to feel something besides this numb static roaring in my skull.

My pulse throbs as I stumble out into the hall, gulping down lungfuls of cool air. But it’s not enough. The walls are too close, pressing in until my head swims and my vision narrows.

I can’t—I can’t—

I rush around a corner and exit into the night.

The garden envelops me. Cups me in shadow and sweet-scented blooms, and I can finally breathe again. Just exist in this stolen moment, the vastness of the sky arcing above me, stars strewn across the velvet dark.

It’s quiet here. Still. The distant strains of music spill from the open doors, gossamer threads plucked out and scattered. I fill my lungs once, twice. Let my head tip back, and my eyes drift shut. My racing heart begins to calm.

Until—

Footsteps. A deliberate, measured tread.

My name whispered into the dark. “Kameron.”

I go still, clench my eyes shut tighter, my nails biting into my palms until the small hurt centres me. Tethers me to reality, to this moment.

“I can practically hear you thinking, mo chridhe ,” he says. Soft now. Coaxing, as if gentling a wild thing. “Won’t you look at me?”

That voice. God, that voice. It winds around me, sinks behind my ribs, and tugs. Drags the air from my lungs until I’m gasping with it, drowning on dry land.

It can’t be real. I’ve finally lost my tenuous hold on sanity, conjured him from shadow and memory and desperate longing. A hallucination to claw open all my barely scabbed wounds and make me bleed.

Slowly, I turn. And there he is.

Kiaran MacKay, gilded in the spill of lamplight. It catches in his black hair, limns the bones of his face. I’ve spent countless nights dreaming of that mouth, the elegant sweep of it. Woken flushed and aching, the ghost of his touch lingering on my skin.

“This is a dream,” I whisper. It has to be.

One dark brow lifts. “Do you often dream of me, then?”

“Every time I close my eyes,” I rasp. “Every single bloody night.”

Something in his expression gentles. Softens the way it only ever does for me. “I know a bit about dreaming of the dead. Shall I touch you?”

At his quiet offer, I’m already shaking my head. A jerky, convulsive motion I can’t control. Can’t rein in the words spilling free now.

“I drove a blade through your heart. Felt your blood on my hands, your last breath on my cheek.” I’m trembling now, a full-body shudder I can’t control. “I killed you. I watched you die, and there was nothing I could—”

Kiaran flashes across the space between us. He gathers me close, arms around my waist. His thumb strokes over the nape of my neck.

“You’ve died twice,” Kiaran murmurs, lips brushing the shell of my ear. “I think I’m entitled to a pair of return journeys, don’t you? Fair’s fair.”

“You always say that in my dreams,” I whisper.

“And you always tell me it’s a dream.” He pulls back far enough to study my face, a faint smile playing at the corners of his mouth. “Remember what Lena told you? Bringing me back required a sacrifice. A life freely given—”

“For a life restored,” I finish. Even as the words leave my lips, understanding crashes through me. Steals what little air remains in my lungs. “And how did you know she told me that? You were dead at the time.”

“Because there was one witness who wouldn’t let it go,” he says quietly. “No matter how cruel I was to her in the end.”

Because if Kiaran stands before me now, whole and alive

. . . If this is real—

“It was Sorcha.” Aithinne’s voice drifts out of the shadows behind me.

“She made the sacrifice and tasked me with delivering a message.” She steps into the light.

“She said to tell the Falconer that her actions change nothing. That she still despises you with the fire of a thousand suns . . . but in the end, she couldn’t be like Bael.

Her old master. Couldn’t leave her life debt to Kadamach unpaid. ”

Sorcha. Sorcha gave her life for Kiaran.

The female who sank a dagger into my heart without blinking. Who left me bleeding out.

I just need him to live , she’d said to Lonnrach. Because he saved her life.

I let out a slow breath. “I never thought I’d see the day. Sorcha, exhibiting something approximating decency.”

Kiaran makes a low noise. “Yes, well. I’d prefer not to dwell overlong on Sorcha or her motivations, no matter how grateful I am.” He slants a look at Aithinne, one dark brow arched. “Don’t you have somewhere else to be? A kingdom in dire need of guidance, perhaps?”

Aithinne heaves a gusty sigh. “I feel for dear Aileana, having to put up with you for the rest of time. Imagine the brooding. The endlessly furrowed brow.” Her nose scrunches, head tipping to the side.

“I’ll just go and make myself useful, shall I?

There’s a ball in need of upending, some scandalised aristocracy to send into a tizzy.

I’ve a mind to find a pretty lass or three to take for a twirl.

And if anyone happens to have cakes secreted about their person, well. All the better.”

She winks at us. Then she turns on her heel and disappears into the ballroom, humming an off-key reel.

I sigh. “She’s going to start a riot, you realise. We’ll be lucky if there’s anything left of the ballroom come morning.”

Kiaran just hums, hands trailing up and down my spine. “Oh, I’ve no doubt. She’s made fomenting chaos into an art form. But I find myself less than concerned with Aithinne’s antics at the moment.”

An uncertainty lingers in the set of his mouth. A hesitance I’m not accustomed to seeing in him.

“You’re still fae,” I breathe. “And I’m only—”

“A stubborn, impossible woman who lives to vex me at every turn?”

“ Kiaran .”

He catches my hand in his. Lifts my wrist to his lips and brushes a kiss right over the flutter of my pulse.

I feel the barest graze of teeth, and my breath hitches.

“Yes, you’re human. Fragile and fleeting.

A magnificent, ephemeral creature. But Lena shared one way,” Kiaran continues, so softly I almost miss it.

“One path that could keep you by my side. If you wanted it.”

I lean into him. “Tell me.”

“Take my mark again.” It’s barely more than breath, ghosting warm over my skin. “If you accept it in full, we’ll both need to feed. From each other.” A pause as his throat works. “For however long you choose to stay with me.”

“If I said I wanted a hundred years?”

His exhale is slow. “Then you’ll have a hundred.”

The next question is so fragile it hurts to give it voice, to let it take up space between us. What I’ve wished for since I first met him—an impossible thing I’ve kept locked up tight.

“And if I wanted forever?”

Kiaran leans in to press his lips to mine. A kiss that’s soft and searching, deep as the sea. The beginning of something. I kiss him back with everything I am. Everything I have. I make promises with each glide of my lips on his. Spill confessions into the give of his mouth.

It’s a vow and a prayer. I tell him everything I never dared hope for, never let myself want.

A future. A life built on more than stolen moments and might-have-beens. Him and me. Together.

Kiaran’s eyes are nearly black when he tears his mouth from mine. His breathing is uneven, chest heaving beneath my palms.

“Hold on to me,” he commands. “Don’t let go.”

Shadows whip up at his silent behest. They twine around our joined hands, our bodies, and the world falls away between blinks. The garden dissolves into smoke and void, music and chatter replaced by the muted susurrus of the aether.

And then we’re stumbling into my moonlit bedchamber, our tangled limbs hitting the counterpane in a graceless sprawl.

Kiaran’s body covers mine. “Easy,” he chides, a laugh caught in his throat. “You’d better get used to travelling by shadow.”

I start removing his coat in swift yanks. “Then as your consort, I expect to be whisked hither and yon whenever I want. I’m thinking a summer palace in the Si?th-bhru?th, and perhaps a charming pied-a ?-terre here in Edinburgh for when we tire of . . .”

I trail off as Kiaran leans over to snag the dagger on my bedside table. Skims the flat of it over my collarbone, my leaping pulse. Then he catches the neckline of my gown and slits it with a deft flick. The corset and the chemise next. Sparing nothing.

The ruined clothes fall away.

“Yes, do help yourself to cutting off my clothes again,” I say dryly. “The fearsome Unseelie King, scourge of the kingdoms, defeated by the intricacies of his consort’s undergarments. A closely guarded secret.”

He bends to press a kiss to my jaw. “Tell me, Kameron. Shall I make it known you’ll be my official consort?” He begins a slow, meandering descent, mapping a trail down my neck, across my collarbones. “Declare it in front of everyone? Because Aithinne has an open invitation for co-ruler.”

I’m finding it increasingly difficult to string coherent thoughts together. “Only if you don’t expect me to wear a crown.” I swallow down a moan. “Or . . . do any . . . bowing—”

My words dissolve as his mouth reaches my breast, his tongue flicking over my nipple.

“A consort need only bow in private.” He continues his relentless journey southward, dancing over the sensitive skin of my ribs and abdomen. “And only when they wish it.”

“Duly noted.”

“Last chance to reconsider,” he says softly, nuzzling into my hip.

“Reconsider? You’d be lost without me, MacKay. Utterly bereft. Reduced to pining dramatically in some dusty crypt for eternity, writing maudlin poems—”

He cuts me off with a kiss. Mouth slanting over mine, hot and insistent.

“The only poetry I want to compose,” he murmurs into the scant space between our lips, “is on your skin. Written in the language of hands and teeth and tongue.”

My heart stutters. I grasp his hand and press our palms together. “Then mark me like you mean it.”

The world narrows down to the shared heat of our joined hands.

Kiaran twines our fingers tighter, and I feel the brief, searing flare of his magic pouring into me.

It sinks into my skin, following the lines and grooves of my palms and fingers in intricate spirals.

Marking me over with the evidence of our bond.

Of my choice.

“Love you,” he whispers.

His mouth finds my neck. Twin pinpricks of pain-pleasure flaring bright as his fangs sink deep. Ravenous, greedy, each slide of his tongue sending fire through me. It’s intimate. Filthy. Holy as a prayer breathed against sweat-damp skin.

“Your turn.” His voice is a dark rasp.

He reaches for the dagger again and presses it into my palm. Curls my fingers around the worn hilt, his gaze never leaving mine.

“Don’t be gentle,” he says, pulling me on top of him.

I set the point of the blade to his chest and draw it down, tearing through fabric.

Undressing him with the blade like he did with me.

When he’s naked beneath me, I register the absence of his tattoos with a distant sort of surprise.

Sorcha and Catri′ona’s vows are absent, the latticework of suffering and atonement entirely erased.

Now, there is only smooth, unblemished skin. A blank canvas.

“All fae oaths end in death,” Kiaran reminds me. His hands slide up my thighs to grip my hips, pulling me flush against the hard heat of him. “The only vows remaining on my body will be yours. So go on. Mark me up.”

I make a slim cut just over his heart, watching the blood gather over his pale skin.

Then I lean down and flick my tongue over the wound.

The first taste is a revelation—ancient power and darkness and winter distilled.

Kiaran’s grip on my hair tightens to the edge of pain, a silent demand.

I trail kisses up the taut line of his neck, savouring the harsh rasp of his breathing.

Then I sink my teeth in hard at his pulse point.

His head tips back on a sound somewhere between a growl and a groan. “Harder, Kameron. I want to wear you on my skin.”

Emboldened, I bite down again until the salt-sweet flood of him coats my mouth. A shudder ripples through him. His breath comes fast and ragged. I lose myself in his taste. His scent. In this moment suspended in amber, stretching into infinity.

With a snarl, Kiaran rolls us. Notches his hips into the cradle of my thighs.

And then he pushes inside me, and thought dissolves into sensation.

Power burns through my veins in a feedback loop of pleasure bordering on pain.

Of ecstasy sharp enough to cut. Building and building until my edges blur, and I can’t tell where he ends and I begin.

“That’s it,” he rasps above me, thrusting deep. “Take it. Take all of me.”

It feels like coming home. Like that missing piece of my soul finally slotting into place. I watch as the marks of our bond crawl across his skin in shimmering whorls and arcs. No longer etched from blood and violence and penance.

Just us. Our story, written in the languages of breath and shadow and skin. Our past, present, future.

“Mine,” he says, the word little more than a breath. “All of you, just as I’m all yours.”

I squeeze Kiaran’s hand. The consort marks flares between our entwined fingers, magic singing through our joined blood.

And I’m exactly where I’m meant to be.